I get sentimental about the strangest things. The manicure set my grandmother gave me. The scissors that we always used when I was growing up. The broken rolling-pin my mother always used that was her mothers (Hum, maybe I come by this naturally). I also get sentimental about cars. We use cars until they are good and done, so they are in our lives a long time before they get sent away. On Friday another road warrior got its exit papers. It made me sad.

Back in 2000 we needed a “new to us” car. Hubby and I looked and looked, but we just couldn’t find something with a price we wanted to pay and a back seat with leg room that would accommodate the ever longer legs of our growing girls. I finally told Hubby that I wanted to find a slightly obscure, but still reliable American car, because I figured American plus obscure would equal cheaper. Then we came across the Dodge Stratus. American? Check! Reliable? Check! Slightly obscure? Well, we had never heard of it so Check!

On December 3rd, we found a low mileage one online at a local dealership. We ran over, test drove it, and signed the deal. Probably the easiest car sale they made that month. (This shows you that the CarMax debacle is a rare occurrence in our lives. Really, buying a car may be a pain for us but we are easy customers). After signing lots of paperwork, I finally took the girls home and Hubby stayed to take possession of the new car. The dealership insisted on taking his photo with the car. I put it in a photo album and found it again this morning. Lumos insisted on checking out the album while I took a photo.

We took many a family road trip in the trusty Stratus. One of the few hitches in our 15+ year relationship occurred the first time Hubby went to change the battery. There wasn’t one. Well, of course there had to be, but when he looked under the hood it was nowhere to be found. A quick peek at the owner’s manual, and he found that it was located behind a front fender. You had to take off a wheel to get to the battery. What? The Stratus also took a special kind of transmission fluid and smaller than usual tires. The tire thing only became a problem recently when, as the days wore down and we knew Youngest Daughter would be buying a new car soon. One of her tires failed and we didn’t want to have to buy a new one. Our trusty tire guy didn’t have any used ones because it was such a weird size. Hubby finally took himself off to the local wrecking yard and found some used tires to tide us over.

Back in 2010 I got a full-time job after four months of unemployment. We had to have some way for Youngest to get herself to school for the last half of her senior year. So we bought the Camry I now drive and turned the Stratus over to her. She was so thrilled. Her first car! Then a little over a month later she was hit by a drunk driver. The car was totaled by the insurance company but wasn’t totaled in the true sense of the word. Knowing what happens to cars when they are driven by new drivers and by kids in college parking lots, we hated to spend the kind of money we would have to to get Youngest a car we were comfortable with. So Hubby saved the Stratus. The only problem was that he couldn’t find a new fender the right color at the local wrecking yard. For the next six years, the Stratus bore its slightly different color fender, a scar from an unpleasant event that could have been so much worse.

Hubby could have gotten a purple fender instead of this darker silver one. He always said he should have put the purple one on the car. Nothing like a two color car to keep your child humble!

The Stratus had a cassette player, not a CD player. Youngest ended up with quite the collection of cassette tapes to play. You can find them for quite cheap in thrift stores! She isn’t quite sure what to do with her collection now. Don’t worry, that little problem is more than made up for by the features and reliability of her new car. After over 177,000 miles the Stratus was one tired, worn out road warrior.

As the trusty Stratus was being put in the trailer to be hauled away, I gave it a salute and hurried back in the house, teary eyed. I was relieved to get it out from in front of our house but sad because of all the memories it represented.

That night I told Youngest I had given the Status a farewell salute. She said she had , too, as she drove off to work that morning. Like mother, like daughter, I guess!

After walking away empty handed from “Fartax,” after they sold the car we thought we were going to buy to someone else, we were forced to wait, in the hopes that their promises were true and another red Dodge Dart was on its way from Denver, Colorado. On Monday Youngest Daughter got a call. The car had arrived. It just had to be looked over before it could be released for sale, which should only take a day or two, the salesman said. It took two days, but I will give them a pass. Just as the car arrived the unthinkable happened. A salesman hopped in a Corvette to allow someone a test drive and the driver sped off, lost control of the car, ran into the tree, and killed the salesman. This happened at the dealership we were dealing with. That may have slowed things down for a day or so. Understandable.

We got the call on Wednesday that the car was ready. However, we couldn’t get there until Friday afternoon. We arrived and walked to the red Dart, full of anticipation. On the way there we noticed they had a Dart in Navy blue, How nice. Didn’t know they were made in Navy blue, we said.

Then we saw the car we had come for. As I like to say, it looked like it was rode hard and put away wet. It only had 11,000 miles on it but they were 11,000 difficult miles. Let me count the damage. A stained front seat. A melted spot on one of the inside back door handles. Glass in the trunk from a broken window (presumable the back window of that car, although it had been replaced). Last but definitely not least, major scratches and gouges in the paint on back bumper that could only be fixed by repainting.

Youngest and I were underwhelmed. Youngest was definitely disappointed and I was getting bad vibes from all over that poor car.

Not sure what to do, we decided to take the car for a test drive anyway. The salesman drove us and the car to the office and left us for a few moments while he went in to run her license. While he was gone I mentioned the navy blue Dodge Dart we had seen. While not as thrilled with the navy blue as she was with the red, Youngest agreed that we should take a look at it. When the salesman returned, we told him we wanted to see that one before we test drove the car from Colorado.

We walked back to the blue car, but it didn’t have a price on it. The salesman looked it up on his phone, but couldn’t find it. He left us to go determine if it had already been sold. A long fifteen minutes later he returned. The car was available, but had just come in, which was why it wasn’t in the system yet. It had 3,000 less miles than the car we had originally wanted to buy and had the back up camera, which the original one didn’t have. But it was the same price. Cheered by those facts and that the only flaw we saw was a small scratch on the trunk lid which could be easily buffed out, we decided to test drive it. It was fine and as we returned to the car lot I asked Youngest if the blue car suited her. She said yes it did. I turned to the salesman and told him, “Your long nightmare is over!”

We drove to the office and I remembered we hadn’t looked in the trunk. Remembering the glass in the trunk of that other Dart, I said to the salesman, “For kicks and giggles, could you pop the trunk?” Youngest and I held our breath as the lid popped open. I turned to her and said, “We better make sure there aren’t any bodies or pools of blood.” She giggled nervously. I lifted the lid and saw…nothing! just a clean car trunk!!! Praise the Lord!

We bought the car. I had to drive our car home so Youngest drove her new car home by herself. As she pulled out of the parking lot there was just enough light to see her face. I thought she might look a little grim, driving a strange car and all for the first time, one she paid for herself. I was totally wrong. I will never forget the beaming look of joy and happiness on her face! She drove out of that “Fartax” with a smile on her face a mile wide. She had a new car!

Meanwhile, I was pretty darn proud of myself. What started as a few visits to dealerships by Youngest and I before we brought Hubby into the picture, ended up being just me guiding Youngest through her first car purchase when Hubby became overwhelmed with work. I guided her through the whole process, dispensing car buying advice along the way. I figured out if cars were a good price. I checked safety ratings. I dealt with salesmen. I read car reviews. I helped her try to get car loans. I dealt with a pretty torturous process after the car we wanted was sold out from under us. Yep. I did it. I am woman. Here me roar after showing my daughter women can by cars, all by themselves.